Nocturnal Animals (2016 Tom Ford & scr)

Is this a revenge story (we notice Amy Adams looks carefully at an 'art' exhibit which is simply that word)? She has dumped Jake Gyllenhaal (doing exactly what her mother, an unrecognisable Laura Linney, says she will do), for another man, and aborted his child, so he writes a disturbing story about a man who loses his wife and child and then dies, and dedicates it to her, then when they arrange to meet, doesn't turn up. Source is Austin Mitchell's 1993 novel 'Tony and Susan'.

Ford: 'I loved the book, I couldn't put it down. When you can't get something out of your mind, option it!' He says he understands Amy's world of privilege but grew up in Mexico and Texas and thus also understood the expectations of being a strong macho man and the thought that you might not make anything of yourself. The writing (which considerably goes beyond the inner monologue of the book) is to an extent autobiographical. It's about art communicating, and people who are fractured on the inside, and about waste.

The acting is great: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Shannon, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber (The Falling), Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Michael Sheen, Andrea Riseborough (totally unrecognisable!) and Robert Aramayo.

Very stylishly made - Seamus McGarvey on camera, Joan Sobel editing, Abel Korzeniowski scoring - and love the smooth way in which the stories bump into each other. Ford says he agrees with critics that he takes time over how things look, but only in the same way as Kubrick or Sirk or de Palma or Hitchcock.